Sverigefinnar tycker och talar : Om språkattityder och stilistisk känslighet hos två generationer sverigefinnar : on language attitudes and stylistic perception among two generations of Sweden Finns

Sammanfattning: The present thesis aims to characterize two subtle aspects of bilingualism among the Sweden Finns, the largest ethnic minority in Sweden. It includes two main parts: 1. the study of language attitudes among Sweden Finns and two control groups-one Swedish and one Finnish-towards different varieties of Swedish and Finnish, using a modified matched-guise test; 2. the characterization of the Sweden Finns' and the control groups' perception of stylistic nuances of lexical items in both Swedish and Finnish (with emphasis on Swedish). In part 2, the subjects were asked to describe the connotative and stylistic meaning of 14 pairs of synonymous words in Swedish (e.g. mamma-morsa 'mother-the old lady') and in Finnish, using Osgood's semantic differential.The main issue is to what extent the Sweden Finns show similarity to the Swedes and/or the Finns regarding the items 1 and 2 described above. Although these aspects may seem unrelated, there is a connection between them: both language attitudes and stylistic perceptions provide relevant information on the extent to which the Sweden Finns are integrated into the Swedish speech community. Thus, similar attitudes between the Sweden Finnish minority and the Swedish majority reflect a higher degree of integration, which presumably results in a more similar language use.The results of the analysis indicate that the various Sweden Finnish test groups (divided according to sex and generation) have a different degree of integration in the Swedish speech community. Adult men prove to be the group with the lowest degree of integration (which is in line with previous studies in the field), while adolescents show a high degree of integration in the Swedish speech community, as evidenced by their high degree of similarity with the Swedish majority in both attitudes and stylistic perception. Interestingly, this group also shows clear integration in the Finnish community. These observations suggest that integration into a new society does not necessarily imply the loss of contact with the original speech community. A positive double identity is a possible and natural option for these young Sweden Finns.